The present invention relates to bitstream management systems generally and, more particularly, to a bitstream corruption/compression tool for a bitstream management system.
Bitstreams are common in digital video and digital audio is systems. Corrupted bitstreams are used to uncover problems in the designs, such as lockup conditions. In the past, specific bitstream structure corruption tools have been used. However, such tools are limited in capability and applicability. An example of a specific bitstream corruption tool is the tool used to corrupt an audio frame adequately to generate a CRC error signal.
The disadvantage with such a tool is specific use constrains limit re-use applicability. For example, hard coding based on a bitstream specific structure makes it more difficult to re-use the tool. Additionally, advanced features such as protection of fields from corruption, are not supported with such tools.
Other stand-alone tools for bitstream corruption require the user to specify the tool parameters. Such parameter specification is typically not efficient, since such programming can be a tedious, arduous, process requiring review of what fields should be corrupted and what fields should be protected from corruption. Such a selection process must be repeated on each pass for each bitstream available for corruption.
The disadvantage with such an approach is the lack of automation of corrupted bitstream generation based on bitstream characterization reports. The lack of higher level constructs to instruct the use of the bitstream corruption tool is another disadvantage.
Additionally, existing bitstreams generated by such corruption tools are used for regressions, without incorporating compaction concepts. Such uncompressed bitstreams, corrupt or not, create a lengthy process of verification, since the huge bitstreams require large amounts of time and CPU resources to run.
The disadvantage with such an approach is that it fails to provide (i) compression or compaction of the generated bitstreams, (ii) small, high coverage, bitstreams, and (iii) higher level constructs to create dense bitstreams.
The present invention concerns an apparatus comprising a first tool configured to generate one or more parameter signals in response to (i) one or more control signals and (ii) an input signal and a second tool configured to generate one or more edited bitstreams in response to (i) one or more bitstreams and (ii) the one or more parameter signals.
The objects, features and advantages of the present invention include providing a programmable bitstream compression/corruption tool that may (i) be used on a variety of bitstreams for a variety of corruption needs, (ii) provide a full spectrum of corruption ranging from full random corruption to field occurrence specific corruption, and/or (iii) provide corruption at different rates within a particular bitstream.
One aspect of the present invention includes providing a testing and verification system that may (i) automatically generate useful corrupted bitstreams, and/or (ii) specify fields in a bitstream to have specific levels of corruption based on the bitstream characterization reports, such as bitstream management system (BMS) reports.
Another aspect of the present invention includes providing a system that may (i) automatically generating useful, high coverage (up to comprehensive), compact bitstreams, (ii) rile provide self-assessment of syntax compliance and coverage of particular bitstream sets, (iii) provide bitstream compaction of existing bitstream(s) down to the essence of the coverage of the original bitstream, and/or (iv) generate compact, high coverage bitstreams (e.g., down to the field level).